


Living.

by Follevolo



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Gallavich Gift Exchange 2014, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2018-02-25 09:35:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2617046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Follevolo/pseuds/Follevolo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Ian meets Mickey when Yev is in high school. Mickey is still in a loveless marriage with Svetlana (who is no longer a prostitute) but they have moved to the north side, and Mickey is a super devoted father.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rettloe](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=rettloe).



There was classic music in the background, and a mint green wallpaper that was driving Mickey mad. Everything was clean and comfortable, silent and warmly condescending. The secretary was pleasant, people waiting in line were reading newspaper or a book and nobody looked like they had some real problem in their life. Mickey wandered if they all had smoked weed before coming here, or if it was this place that naturally silenced people in an  unaware expression of blatant confusion, like that kind of hugging machine that calms cows down before killing them.

He couldn’t afford this shit. Hell, he couldn’t stand this shit. He knew why he chose to be there, he knew he needed it more he was willing to admit. He told Yev he was going to a stupid job interview or something and Svetlana wouldn’t ever acknowledge his absence, she was way too busy sucking up someone else’s balls. He didn’t care, of course. But it bothered him to see disappointment, sometimes, during the bad days, in Yev’s blue eyes, that pair of blue eyes that proved without needing a Dna test that he was undoubtedly a Milkovich. A Milkovich who grew up too soon, just like him, but for very different reasons.

Mickey knew he wasn’t his. He knew he was his father’s. He knew because when Terry dared him to fuck his whore in front of him, to prove his masculinity like some kind of wild animal, he pretended to oblige but he never came, he couldn’t he tried he prayed she would not tell, and she didn’t and everything was quite for a while, but then it wasn’t she was pregnant she was asking money and suddenly they were married and she snored through her coked-out nose on her side of the bed and he never turned around to see if she was facing him.

She wasn’t.

They barely talked, and Mickey liked it that way. There was something oddly similar to mutual comfort in that silence they shared at breakfast, looking at each other from over their coffee cups; they soon learned how much sugar the other wanted in his coffee or her favorite pancakes: it was banana pancakes and he liked them, too.

For the first few years there was only Yev in their lives, there was no time to think about living in a cage or feeling empty inside or throwing up in the bathroom at night when you dreamed of drinking up someone else’s cum while licking the tip of his cock. There was no time to come out with yourself even if you silently knew what it had been happening inside of you since you were ten. There was no time to do anything about that shit.

In the warmest nights of summer, when Yev some hours earlier had smiled or talked or walked for the first time, Svetlana would smile too and in bed she would raise an arm and move her tiny soft fingers on his skin, and touch his hand for a few moments. He used to let her, and close his eyes, and breathe lightly.

That only, on the good days.

On the bad days Terry was out of the iron hotel and Svetlana was working and the baby was crying and Mickey was dying inside and he was so terrifyingly aware of it. It was his personal war, every single day, to go through the play, learn his lines, tell them right, walk under the storm without ever flinching, head low, eyes on the ground, he shall survive. Not live, never live. But breathe and survive, and make sure to raise Yev in a way he would never know the difference.

He was such a good kid, his little baby brother, his little baby son.

Years passed, things changed as surprisingly as they could. Terry died. They moved out of that hunted house. Svetlana started dancing in a club, finding other ways to sell her body that didn’t hurt as much as what she did before, but still she used to come home and her eyes were broken. Mickey kept dealing for a while, spending most of his time raising Yev. When he realized how dangerous, toxic and scarring their life was to a little kid, he decided that he would never, ever, for the life of him, be his father and throw Yev in that arena of gladiators that was the Milkovich life philosophy of dealing and scamming, fighting and fucking, drinking and sniffing. Yev would be different, the circle would break and him, Mickey, would have done something in his life out of the darkness.

So he got clear, he found an honest, humble job, a little flat in the Northside, a good school. Svetlana didn’t ask: she followed him like a ghost, but she smiled a little more often, because Yev was growing up like none of them ever had the possibility to grow up: loved. He was growing up being loved.

Now Yev was a little man, and it was fucking hilarious to have a teenager roaming around in the house, goofy and grumpy, eating always too loudly and swearing for no reason. He was in love, Jesus Christ, and she wouldn’t even look at him. Mickey was amused by how he so naturally came to him for advice, like he hadn’t been in an unloving marriage for sixteen years now, God time flies when your life is not yours, God, time flies when you are not living. He realized his son could easily find someone before him, and he had sixteen fucking years of advantage. He realized one day, sooner than later, his son would marry that someone and have kids and be happy and what would it happen to him, then? What would it be his life goal? His reason to get out of bed in the morning? His reason to survive?

It was time to think for himself, it was now, time to accept, time to try, time to look in the mirror without flinching, time to admit, time to breathe in and breath out and then talk, time to play, time to enjoy, time to find his way to his own little happiness, not that he ever believed it was actually possible, but they were out of the Southside, out of the darkness, they were free and he had the fucking right to get up and find _someone_ in this hell of a world that would understand and he _needed_ him, he needed him so bad, he dreamed about him every night, he thought about him during the day, he saw couple kissing or walking or doing whatever and it was like something was scratching his insides,

setting fire to his insides for fun to distract his heart from ever missing _him_ , but he would forever miss _him_.

So there he was. Trying. It felt so damn ridiculous and pathetic and wrong in every fucking way. He got up, ready to run out of that door and pretend he never had such an idea. He would just buy some cheesecake and a coffee and read the newspaper and go to work and he would soon forget that he ever felt such a hole in his stomach, cmon, he wasn’t a pussy, he could live on just fine.

“You’re bailing out, uh? I did too. Three times before actually walking in that office”

He turned around to see a ginger guy smirking at him with a knowing glance; he was wearing a green beanie, tight jeans and a plain white t-shirt. He looked like the most casual, I’m-wearing-the-first-things-that-i-saw-on-the-chair-i-call-closet, greek god. Mickey swallowed more silently he could, but he still had the impression the guy could tell he was not passing unseen under these pair of blue eyes. 

“I’m not bailing out” he muttered weakly “I just remembered I had an appointment”

The guy laughed loudly, closing his eyes and throwing his head wildly behind his shoulders: “Oh, yeah. Of course. Good luck with that, then”

They looked at each other for a minute, silently. The guy thought he was so fucking clever, looking at him with that Bambi green eyes lighting up the place like a Christmas tree in the middle of the square of little town of Handsome.  He wanted to flip in the bird and just go, but there was something, _something_ , that was keeping him paralyzed on that very spot, in front of him, staring at the woods in Neverland.

He sighed, rolled his eyes at his stupidity, and sheepishly sat next to mystery guy.

“I guess it can wait” he mumbled raising an eyebrow and smiling just a little.

“Probably”

 

“You don’t seem to be someone who needs to be here”

“It’s always the quiet normal ones that end up killing the cashier in the grocery store. Then journalists will come and my neighbor will say ‘he was so quiet and normal’ all the time…”

“You sure as hell are not quiet, smart guy”

“Nor normal, trust me” Oh he trusted him. Guys like that don’t walk around the world in their plain white t-shirts on a daily basis. If Mickey knew he would have found them in a psych waiting room, he would have come years sooner. “Why are you here, though? You don’t seem someone who asks people in a tie for advice”

“I’m… I’m not here for advice. I just need to get something out my chest”

“Did you kill someone?” he stared at him with wide eyes and a mocking-terrified expression.

“Do you ever shut the fuck up?”

“Hardly”

There was something in the way he smiled, something in the way he felt so comfortable being there, being almost himself, almost free, that was old and new to Mickey altogether. It was very similar to how he used to feel when he was alone with Yev and he was still a baby. He would talk to him, and talk to him, and tell him just the truth, even the bad ones, and cry sometimes and give him a lot of kisses. But this, this comfort he was getting from a stranger just by sitting next to him and hearing his stupid lame jokes, it was more, it was gravity, and instinct, and nature, and perfection.

“I’m gay” he said, without even thinking about it. The guy looked at him with a strange, unreadable expression, like there was something he finally didn’t understand.

“Is that why you’re here? It’s not a disease, you know”

“No, this is not why I’m here. I’m here because you are the first person I ever told this”

“Okay, I can see this may be an issue”

“I’m married and my son is a teenager who asks me what is love and I don’t know how to answer”

Smart guy sighed. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He was staring at the ceiling, his head resting on the mint green wall, his fingers tapping nervously on his thighs.

“The first time I said it out loud, it was to my sister” he whispered, lost in a memory “she didn’t react. She told me she knew already. She never acted different or weird, not even when I banged her boyfriend’s married dad. I’m sorry you had it way worse”

Mickey nodded, looking at him in trance.  Had he had a different father, had he grown up in a different neighborhood, he would have met this guy when he was sixteen, like Yev, and he would have loved him. He missed that lost memories like they happened in another life he was not able to remember. He missed all the lives he didn’t live, stuck in the nightmare of a lie for years, and years, and years.

“Why are you here?”

“I’m bipolar”

“What’s that shit?”

“It’s manic depression. High highs and low lows all over again. I’ve been on meds for a long time now, I’m quite stable, but at first when it started, I was eighteen and it was a fucking nightmare, especially in my neighborhood. We moved out, eventually, but it took some time to gain enough money”

Mickey’s eyes widen in disbelief: “You’re Southside?”

“To the core, man”

“Fuck. You’re a survivor just like me. And here I thought you were some rich lucky pussy with some fancy brain damage!”

“I lost my toughness over the years, I suppose”

“Maybe I lost my sight”

“Sometimes it feels like another life”

“Sometimes it does, yeah”

“But then I remember”

“And I wish I didn’t remember”

There was something, there. _Something, like living_.

“I’m Ian”

“Mickey”

“Well, Mick, it’s my turn. Don’t run away while I’m gone. I’m gonna buy you a drink when we get out of this mint shitshow” He got up and waved him goodbye, before walking slowly in the doctor’s office. Mickey didn’t have the time to say or do anything really, he just sat there feeling the urgent need of following him wherever he went. He stared at the closed door for what it looked like forever, thinking about how hysterically fucked-up life is, sometimes, when it leads you to the unexpected. He stared at that door, without moving, waiting.

When the door opened again, his heart fluttered just a little, but he could feel himself smiling.

It was nice, he thought, living. 

 

 

 


End file.
